SpotUS: The Homeless Triangle: San Francisco, Los Angeles and Prison

Spot.Us is a group that helps independent journalists raise money for investigative stories. Here’s one that caught my eye: A practicing internist physician named R. Jan Gurley wants to take a close look at what happens after a person leaves prison, say, after two years behind bars, with only 200 bucks in their pocket. Her idea is to investigate the notion of “homeless churn,” the unfortunate social phenomenon that might occur when people are released from prison without the social tools or resources to make it on the outside.

There are tens of thousands of prisoners released annually to the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Where do they end up, and how many of them end up back in prison? Ms. Gurley intends to find out. If you would like to help fund her effort to raise the $1200 needed to research and write the story, you can donate as little as $5 or as much as you want. You can also answer a survey at the Spot.Us site and provide credits toward the funding of her investigation.

R. Jan Gurley is a physician who sees patients in a homeless clinic for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Her writing has appeared in Slate, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Sunday magazine and the New England Journal of Medicine.